Creative Europe Desk Ireland – Culture

Eunetstar - Art on the street

Year

2003

Summary

Eunetstar (EUropean NETwork of STreet ARts) was established to promote higher quality street, open-air and site-specific theatre productions, and to increase the popularity of this rich vein of artistic expression.

Funding Strand

Culture 2000 Multi-annual project

Description

Street art can be dynamic, experimental, provocative and controversial. It is also one of the most under-appreciated forms of performance art in Europe. “Eunetstar” (EUropean NETwork of STreet ARts) was established to promote higher quality street, open-air and sitespecifictheatre productions, and to increase the popularity of this rich vein of artistic expression.

Eunetstar was launched by nine international street art festivals from Ireland to Romania, which combined their forces in a spirit of mutual support and development. The aim was to create new approaches to co-production involving festivals from different countries. Crossborder workshops, professional mentoring, and the translation and adaptation of existing works provided inspiration for new forms of expression, and maximised thepotential of some of Europe’s best street artists.

The network carried out qualitative research into festival audiences to better understand public preferences and to allow for the development of increasingly popular performances. The support given to (co-)productions was thus better targeted towards shows that wouldgenerate maximum public appreciation of the network’s festivals and to help their on-going development.

To complement the work on the production side, the project also targeted the public, to increase awareness of the quality and variety of European street art. It publicised street art through the creation of websites and the production and distribution of promotional DVDs.